Absolutely one of the most important documentaries produced about Desert Storm.It's showing in small theaters in CA now and will be circulating across the country.

Call your local access cable channel and ask them to air this, it's something everyone needs to watch, and after they do, they will "get it", the information is unrefutable, documented, proven.

It's time people knew about U-238, among other lies we've been told about this war, the same lies that are being recycled for Gulf War II.

Copies on VHS are available for $25, worth every penny. Educational / institutional use copies are avaialable for $250 and you can purchase a copy in PAL format if you are in Europe for $30 U.S.

Transcripts are also available for $30.

If you are in a position to purchase a copy please do, and show it to as many people as you can. Your local access station will show it if they get enough requests.

Please watch this and get the word out to everyone you can, if for no other reason than to keep our military personnel from being poisoned by the depleted urnaium -radioactive waste packed into their ammo.

BOSTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday rejected a legal bid by a group of U.S. soldiers and some members of the U.S. Congress to keep President Bush from ordering an invasion of Iraq without formal congressional approval, saying the court had no business getting involved at this stage.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that a federal court can judge the war policies of political branches of government only when actions taken by Congress and the president are in conflict -- a situation that does not exist today.

The civil lawsuit, brought by three members of the military, six parents of U.S. troops and six members of Congress, sought an injunction to stop potential U.S. military action on the grounds that only Congress has the right to declare war.

Tauro dismissed the suit, which also named Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a defendant.

The Bush administration has only lukewarm public support for military action against Iraq, aimed at ridding it of banned weapons, and follows major anti-war demonstrations in the United States and abroad.

Reading from a written decision, Tauro referred to a situation that "does not amount to resolute conflict between the branches -- but that does argue against an uninformed judicial intervention."

Plaintiffs -- including Democratic Reps. John Conyers of Michigan and James McDermott of Washington -- argued Congress had neither declared war nor taken any action to give Bush the power to wage it.

The suit said the framers of the U.S. Constitution aimed to deny presidents the imperial war-making powers of European monarchs, and said the administration's plans for war on Iraq were unconstitutional because they violated that separation of powers.

Senior aides to President George W. Bush say he faces a humiliating defeat before the United Nations Security Council next week.

And signs emerged today that the U.S. may withdraw the resolution from security council consideration.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, fresh from his latest round of meetings with representatives of countries on the Security Council, delivered the bad news to Bush on Monday. "You will lose, Mr. President," Powell told Bush. "You will lose badly and the United States will be humiliated on the world stage."

Powell told Bush he has only four of the nine votes needed for approval of a second resolution. As a result, some White House advisors are now urging the President to back off his tough stance on war with Iraq and give UN weapons inspectors more time.

"We have no other choice," admits one Bush advisor. "We don't have the votes. We don't have the support."

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleisher, in today's press briefing, appeared to signal a U.S. retreat from demanding a vote next week, saying "the president has said he believes that a vote is desirable. It is not mandatory."

John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that while it is too early for the United States to withdraw the resolution, "we haven't crossed that bridge," Negroponte said.

Powell told Bush on Monday that Turkey's refusal to allow U.S. troops to stage at the country's border with Iraq doomed any chance of consensus at the UN. "Many were watching Turkey," Powell told Bush. "Had they agreed, it might have helped us sway critical votes."

Powell met privately today with Mexico Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez to try and "parse" new language for the second resolution to satisfy a Mexican request to modify the text and extend the deadline for weapons inspections. "It (the meeting) did not produce results," a Powell spokesman said afterwards.

Publicly, Powell is leaving the door open for the U.S. to withdraw the resolutions saying, telling a German television interviewer: "At the start of next week we'll decide when, depending on what we have heard, we will vote on a resolution. It will be a difficult vote for the U.N. Security Council."

Some Bush aides now admit privately that the President, for all his tough talk, may have to back down and postpone his plans to invade Iraq in the near future, delaying any invasion until April or May at the earliest.

"The vote in Turkey f-cked things up big time," grumbles one White House aide. "It pushes our timetable back. On the other hand, it might give us a chance to save face."

"Saving face" could mean backing away from a showdown with the UN Security Council next week and agreeing to let the weapons inspection process run its course....

"The prudent thing to do would be to let Iraq cool off on a back burner and concentrate on Mohammed," says Republican strategist Arnold Beckins. "Saddam isn't going anywhere. There's too much heat on him right now for him to pull something."

Right now, only the U.S., Britain and Spain favor immediate military action against Iraq. With most of the other allies lining up against the U.S., Bush faces both a diplomatic and public relations nightmare if he proceeds against Hussein without UN backing.

"We've always needed an exit strategy," admits a White House aide. "Circumstances have given us one. Perhaps we shouldn't ignore it."

posted 03-07-2003 01:00 AM
Why do you waste valuable space here posting a link and then cutting and pasting what one can look up for themselves? It defies logic. Can't you write things on your own? Oh, I forgot, your the cut and paste waste, to quote a now banned troll.

I'm for giving them more time, but in the end I think we are going to hammer them anyway. It needs to be done.

HOUSTON, March 6 (Reuters) - A Halliburton Co. (nyse: HAL - news - people) subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) has won the contract to oversee any firefighting operations at Iraqi oilfields after any U.S.-led invasion, a Defense Department source said on Thursday.

KBR was widely viewed by many in the oilfield services industry as the likely candidate to oversee firefighting in Iraq's oilfields. Halliburton does extensive logistic support work for the U.S. military.

Vice President Dick Cheney served as Halliburton's chief executive officer from 1995 to 2000,

A possible beneficiary of Thursday's deal is oilwell firefighting company Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc., with which Halliburton has had an alliance since 1995.

A Halliburton spokeswoman declined comment and referred all questions to the Defense Department.

A REPORT declassified by the United Nations yesterday contained a hidden bombshell with the revelation that inspectors have recently discovered an undeclared Iraqi drone with a wingspan of 7.45m, suggesting an illegal range that could threaten Iraq’s neighbours with chemical and biological weapons. US officials were outraged that Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, did not inform the Security Council about the drone, or remotely piloted vehicle, in his oral presentation to Foreign Ministers and tried to bury it in a 173-page single-spaced report distributed later in the day. The omission raised serious questions about Dr Blix’s objectivity.

“Recent inspections have also revealed the existence of a drone with a wingspan of 7.45m that has not been declared by Iraq,” the report said. “Officials at the inspection site stated that the drone had been test-flown. Further investigation is required to establish the actual specifications and capabilities of these RPV drones . . . (they) are restricted by the same UN rules as missiles, which limit their range to 150km (92.6 miles).

Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, told the Security Council in February that Washington had evidence that Iraq had test-flown a drone in a race-track pattern for 500km non-stop.

In another section of the declassified report, the inspectors give warning that Iraq still has spraying devices and drop tanks that could be used in dispersing chemical and biological agents from aircraft. “A large number of drop tanks of various types, both imported and locally manufactured, are available and could be modified,” it says.

The paper, obtained by The Times, details the possible chemical and biological arsenal that British and US Forces could face in an invasion of Iraq. The paper suggests that Iraq has huge stockpiles of anthrax, may be developing long-range missiles and could possess chemical and biological R400 aerial bombs and Scud missiles, and even smallpox.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, told his fellow Security Council Foreign Ministers that the document was a“chilling read”.

General Powell resorted to reading passages from the paper out loud in the Council chamber. He pointed out that it chronicled nearly 30 times when Iraq had failed to provide credible evidence to substantiate its claims, and 17 instances when inspectors uncovered evidence that contradicted those claims. But his draft copy, dating from a meeting of the inspectors’ advisory board last week, did not contain the crucial passage about the new drone.

The decision by Dr Blix to declassify the internal report marks the first time the UN has made public its suspicions about Iraq’s banned weapons programmes, rather than what it has been able to actually confirm. “Unmovic has credible information that the total quantity of biological warfare agent in bombs, warheads and in bulk at the time of the Gulf War was 7,000 litres more than declared by Iraq. This additional agent was most likely all anthrax,” it says.

The report says there is “credible information” indicating that 21,000 litres of biological warfare agent, including some 10,000 litres of anthrax, was stored in bulk at locations around the country during the war and was never destroyed.

The paper, a collection of 29 “clusters” of questions for Iraq, offers some reassurance about Iraq’s missing botulinum toxin, which Unmovic believed is “unlikely to retain much, if any, of its potency” if it has been stockpiled since 1991.

It was in no way a conspiracy. As far back as 1998, ultra right US think tanks had developed and published plans for an era of US world domination, sidelining the UN and attacking Iraq. These people were not taken seriously. But now they are calling the tune.

German commentators and correspondents have been confused. Washington has tossed around so many types of reasons for war on Baghdad "that it could make the rest of the world dizzy", said the South German Times.

And the Nuremburg News reported on public statements last week by Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer to an inner circle in the US that war can only be avoided if Saddam not only disarms, but also leaves office.

Regime change is a condition that is in none of the barely remembered 18 UN resolutions. The Nuremburg News asked in astonishment whether Fleischer had made the biggest Freudian slip of his career or whether he spoke with the President's authority.

It's not about Saddam's weapons

So it goes. Across the world critics of President Bush are convinced that a second Gulf War is actually about replacing Saddam, whether the dictator is involved with WMD or not. "It's not about his WMD," writes the German born Israeli peace campaigner, Uri Avnery, "its purely a war about world domination, in business, politics, defence and culture".

There are real models for this. They were already under development by far right Think Tanks in the 1990s, organisations in which cold-war warriors from the inner circle of the secret services, from evangelical churches, from weapons corporations and oil companies forged shocking plans for a new world order.

In the plans of these hawks a doctrine of "might is right" would operate, and the mightiest of course would be the last superpower, America.

Visions of world power on the Web

To this end the USA would need to use all means - diplomatic, economic and military, even wars of aggression - to have long term control of the resources of the planet and the ability to keep any possible rival weak.

These 1990's schemes of the Think Tanks, from sidelining the UN to a series of wars to establish dominance - were in no way secret. Nearly all these scenarios have been published; some are accessible on the Web.

For a long time these schemes were shrugged off as fantasy produced by intellectual mavericks - arch-conservative relics of the Reagan era, the coldest of cold-war warriors, hibernating in backwaters of academia and lobby groups.

At the White House an internationalist spirit was in the air. There was talk of partnerships for universal human rights, of multi-lateralism in relations with allies. Treaties on climate-change, weapons control, on landmines and international justice were on the agenda.

Saddam's fall was planned in 1998

In this liberal climate there came, nearly unnoticed, a 1997 proposal of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that forcefully mapped out "America's global leadership". On 28 Jan 1998 the PNAC project team wrote to President Clinton demanding a radical change in dealings with the UN and the end of Saddam.

While it was not clear whether Saddam was developing WMD, he was, they said, a threat to the US, Israel, the Arab States and "a meaningful part of the world's oil reserves". They put their case as follows:

"In the short term this means being ready to lead military action, without regard for diplomacy. In the long term it means disarming Saddam and his regime. We believe that the US has the right under existing Security Council resolutions to take the necessary steps, including war, to secure our vital interests in the Gulf. In no circumstances should America's politics be crippled by the misguided insistence of the Security Council on unanimity." (clintonletter)

Blueprint for an offensive

This letter might have remained yellowing in the White House archives if it did not read like a blue-print for a long-desired war, and still might have been forgotten if ten PNAC members had not signed it. These signatories are today all part of the Bush Administration. They are Dick Cheney - Vice President, Lewis Libby - Cheney's Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld - Defence Minister, Paul Wolfowitz - Rumsfeld's deputy, Peter Rodman - in charge of 'Matters of Global Security', John Bolton - State Secretary for Arms Control, Richard Armitage - Deputy Foreign Minister, Richard Perle - former Deputy Defence Minister under Reagan, now head of the Defense Policy Board, William Kristol - head of the PNAC and adviser to Bush, known as the brains of the President, Zalmay Khalilzad - fresh from being special ambassador and kingmaker in Afghanistan, now Bush's special ambassador to the Iraqi opposition.

But even before that - over ten years ago - two hardliners from this group had developed a defence proposal that created a global scandal when it was leaked to the US press. The suggestion that was revealed in 1992 in The New York Times was developed by two men who today are Cabinet members - Wolfowitz and Libby. It essentially argued that the doctrine of deterrence used in the Cold War should be replaced by a new global strategy.

Its goal was the enduring preservation of the superpower status of the US - over Europe, Russia and China. Various means were proposed to deter potential rivals from questioning America's leadership or playing a larger regional or global role. The paper caused major concerns in the capitals of Europe and Asia.

But the critical thing, according to the Wolfowitz-Libby paper, was complete American dominance of Eurasia. Any nation there that threatened the USA by acquiring WMD should face pre-emptive attack, they said. Traditional alliances should be replaced by ad-hoc coalitions.

This 1992 masterplan then formed the basis of a PNAC paper that was concluded in September 2000, just months before the start of the Bush Administration.

That September 2000 paper (Rebuilding America's Defences) was developed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Libby, and is devoted to matters of "maintaining US pre-eminence, thwarting rival powers and shaping the global security system according to US interests". (RAD)

The cavalry on the new frontier

Amongst other things, this paper said, the USA must re-arm and build a missile shield in order to put itself in a position to fight numerous wars simultaneously and chart its own course. Whatever happened, the Gulf would have to be in US control:

"The US has sought for years to play an ongoing role in the security architecture of the Gulf. The unresolved conflict with Iraq provides a clear basis for our presence, but quite independent of the issue of the Iraqi regime, a substantial US presence in the Gulf is needed."

The paper describes these US forces stationed overseas in the raw language of the Wild West, calling them "the Cavalry on the New American Frontier". Even peace efforts, the paper continues, should have the stamp of the USA rather than the UN.

Gun-at-the-head diplomacy

Scarcely had President Bush (jnr) won his controversial election victory and replaced Clinton than he brought the hardliners from the PNAC into his administration. The old campaigner Richard Perle (who once told the Hamburg Times about 'gun-at-the-head diplomacy') found himself in the key role at the Defense Policy Board. This board operates in close cooperation with Pentagon boss Rumsfeld.

At a breath-taking pace the new power-bloc began implementing the PNAC strategy. Bush ditched international treaty after international treaty, shunned the UN and began treating allies as inferiors. After the attacks of 11 September, as fear ruled the US and anthrax letters circulated, the Bush cabinet clearly took the view that the time was ripe to dust off the PNAC plans for Iraq.

Just six days after 11 September, Bush signed an order to prepare for war against the terror network and the Taliban. Another order went to the military, that was secret initially, instructing them to develop scenarios for a war in Iraq.

A son of a bitch, but our son of a bitch

Of course the claims of Iraqi control of the 11 September hijackers never were proven, just like the assumption that Saddam was involved with the anthrax letters (they proved to be from sources in the US Military). But regardless, Richard Perle claimed in a TV interview that "there can be no victory in the war on terror if Saddam remains in power".

The dictator, demanded Perle, must be deposed by the US as a matter of priority "because he symbolises contempt for all Western values". But Saddam had always been that way, even when he gained power in Iraq with US backing.

At that time a Secret Service officer from the US embassy in Baghdad reported to CIA Headquarters: "I know Saddam is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch". And after the US had supported the dictator in his war with Iran, the retired CIA Director Robert Gates says he had no illusions about Saddam. The dictator, says Gates "was never a reformer, never a democrat, just a common criminal".

But the PNAC paper does not make clear why Washington now wants to declare war, even without UN support, on its erstwhile partner.

A shining example of freedom

There is a lot of evidence that Washington wants to remove the Iraqi regime in order to bring the whole Middle East more fully under its economic sphere of influence. Bush puts it somewhat differently - after a liberation that is necessitated by breaches of international law, Iraq "will serve as a dramatic and shining exampled of freedom to other nations of the region".

Experts like Udo Steinbach, Director of the German-Orient Institute in Hamburg, have doubts about Bush's bona fides. Steinbach describes the President's announcement last week of a drive to democratise Iraq as "a calculated distortion aimed at justifying war".

There is nothing currently to indicate that Bush truly is pursuing democratisation in the region.

"Particularly in Iraq," says Steinbach, "I cannot convince myself that after the fall of Saddam something democratic could take shape."

Control the flow of oil, control your rivals

This so called pre-emptive war that the PNAC ideologues have longed for against Iraq also serves, in the judgement of Uri Avnery, to take the battle to Europe and Japan. It brings US dominance of Eurasia closer.

Avnery notes:

"American occupation of Iraq would secure US control not only of the extensive oil reserves of Iraq, but also the oil of the Caspian Sea and the Gulf States. With control of the supply of oil the US can stall the economies of Germany, France and Japan at will, just by manipulating the oil price. A lower price would damage Russia, a higher one would shaft Germany and Japan. That's why preventing this war is essential to Europe's interests, apart from Europeans' deep desire for peace."

"Washington has never been shy about its desire to tame Europe," argues Avnery. In order to implement his plans for world dominance, says Avnery, "Bush is prepared to spill immense quantities of blood, so long as it's not American blood".

The world will toe the American line

The arrogance of the hawks in the US administration, and their plan to have the world toe their line while they decide on war or peace, shocks experts like the international law expert Hartmut Schiedermair from Cologne. The American "crusading zeal" that can make such statements he says is "highly disturbing".

Similarly Harald Mueller - a leading peace researcher - has long criticised the German Government for "assiduously overlooking and tacitly endorsing" the dramatic shift in US foreign policy of 2001. He says the agenda of the Bush administration is unmistakable:

"America will do as it pleases. It will obey international law if it suits, and break that law or ignore it if necessary ... The USA wants total freedom for itself, to be the aristocrat of world politics."

Infatuated with war

Even senior politicians in countries backing a second Gulf War are appalled by the radicals in the White House.

Beginning last year, responding to the PNAC study, long-serving Labour MP Tam Dalyell raged against it in the House of Commons:

"This is rubbish from right wing think tanks where bird-brained war-mongers huddle together - people who have never experienced the horror of war, but are infatuated with the idea of it."

Even his own leader got a broad-side: "I am appalled that a Labour PM would hop into bed with such a troop of moral pygmies."

Across the Atlantic in mid February, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd (at 86 years of age the so-called "Father of the Senate") spoke out. The longest serving member of that Chamber warned the pre-emptive war that the Right were advocating was a "distortion of long-standing concepts of the right of self-defence" and "a blow against international law". Bush's politics, he said "could well be a turning point in world history" and "lay the foundation for anti-Americanism" across much of the world. (Byrd's speech is at A lonely voice in a US Senate silent on war.)

Holding the rest of the world in contempt

One person who is absolutely unequivocal about the problem of anti-Americanism is former President Jimmy Carter. He judges the PNAC agenda in the same way. At first, argues Carter, Bush responded to the challenge of September 11 in an effective and intelligent way, "but in the meantime a group of conservatives worked to get approval for their long held ambitions under the mantle of 'the war on terror'".

The restrictions on civil rights in the US and at Guantanamo, cancellation of international accords, "contempt for the rest of the world", and finally an attack on Iraq "although there is no threat to the US from Baghdad" - all these things will have devastating consequences, according to Carter.

"This entire unilateralism", warns the ex-President, "will increasingly isolate the US from those nations that we need in order to do battle with terrorism".

Robert Bryce in Austin, Texas and Julian Borger in WashingtonWednesday March 12, 2003The Guardian

Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.

The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation" of up to $1m (£600,000) a year.

When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George Bush's running mate, he opted not to receive his leaving payment in a lump sum but instead have it paid to him over five years, possibly for tax reasons.

An aide to the vice president said yesterday: "This is money that Mr Cheney was owed by the corporation as part of his salary for the time he was employed by Halliburton and which was a fixed amount paid to him over time."

The aide said the payment was even insured so that it would not be affected even if Halliburton went bankrupt, to ensure there was no conflict of interest.

"Also, the vice president has nothing whatsoever to do with the Pentagon bidding process," the aide added.

The company would not say how much the payments are. The obligatory disclosure statement filled by all top government officials says only that they are in the range of $100,000 and $1m. Nor is it clear how they are calculated.

Halliburton is one of five large US corporations - the others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons Corp, and the Louis Berger Group - invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out to be the biggest reconstruction project since the second world war.

It is estimated to be worth up to $900m for the preliminary work alone, such as rebuilding Iraq's hospitals, ports, airports and schools.

The contract winners will be able to establish a presence in post-Saddam Iraq that should give them an invaluable edge in winning future contracts.

The defence department contract awarded to the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR), to control oil fires if Saddam Hussein sets the well heads alight, will put the company in an excellent position to bid for huge contracts when Iraq's oil industry is rehabilitated.

KBR has already benefited considerably from the "war on terror". It has so far been awarded contracts worth nearly $33m to build the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for al-Qaida suspects.

Asked whether the payments to Mr Cheney represented a conflict of interest, Halliburton's spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said: "We have been working as a government contractor since the 1940s. Since this time, KBR has become the premier provider of logistics and support services to all branches of the military."

In the five years Mr Cheney was at the helm, Halliburton nearly doubled the amount of business it did with the government to $2.3bn. The company also more than doubled its political contributions to $1.2m, overwhelmingly to Republican candidates.

Mr Cheney sold most of his Halliburton shares when he left the company, but retained stock options worth about $8m. He arranged to pay any profits to charity.

· Robert Bryce is the author of Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, Jealousy and the Death of Enron

posted 03-12-2003 04:32 PM
what pieces mech ? a lottery, publisher's clearinging house ALL large sums come with an option of lump 5 15 or 30 years dispersements...exclusively for tax reasons...

again you make no sense.

The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation" of up to $1m (£600,000) a year.

When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George Bush's running mate, he opted not to receive his leaving payment in a lump sum but instead have it paid to him over five years, possibly for tax reasons.

posted 03-12-2003 04:41 PM
"----Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.----"

posted 03-13-2003 08:44 AM
This is why China is full steam ahead on plant-based fuel, and ethanol. The Japanese and Europeans are way ahead on hybrids, hydrogen, and fuel cells, while America puts a measly 1.5 billion toward alternative fuel. That's what it costs to keep troops in the Gulf for 1 day. The Empire is winding down.

I guess the Arabs and the NeoCons will battle until there's no petrol left, while Russia grows the soybeans and corn for fuel. Think of all the solar power from the Arab countries. The Sleeping Dragon awaits, and The Bear is coming out of hibernation.